Synodality and the Spirit of Truth, by Michael Hanby

By Michael Hanby, First Things, August 2023

Facts and great personages in world history occur, as it were, twice . . . the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” The Synod on Synodality seems destined to confirm Marx’s words (themselves a revision of Hegel). The tragedy arises from the deep theological and philosophical division that has plagued Catholic Christianity throughout the modern era, ever since God disappeared from the horizon and the Church became split between recalcitrant traditionalism and modernist historicism. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Maurice Blondel described the result in words perhaps even better suited to our own time: “With every day that passes, the conflict between tendencies which set Catholic against Catholic in every order—social, political, philosophical—is revealed as sharper and more general. One could almost say that there are now two quite incompatible ‘Catholic mentalities’ . . . And that is manifestly abnormal, since there cannot be two Catholicisms.” …

Continue reading >>>>